Talthybius and Andromache
In the Andromache scene
the herald’s sympathy for the women and the distress which his duties cause him
is unmistakable. He asks her not to hate him for the orders which he brings
from the Greeks and their commanders, that is, in effect, he wants her to
distinguish himself from his office, as Cassandra did not do. He hesitates as
soon as he starts (713) and says the word “evil” κακά in mounting intensity at the end of four lines in
succession. ( 717–720). By reporting Odysseus’
condemnatory speech among the assembled Greeks the herald distances himself
from his message. One continuous sentence spread over three verses and
interrupted by two separate verses of interjection by Andromache with one more
instance of κακά, culminates in a tremendous climax of the revelation
of the manner of the boy’s execution (721–725). Such an extension of continuous
but interrupted syntax in stichomythia ( rapid back and forth one line at a
time dialogue) is even for Euripides an unusual and striking effect. There is a
hint of language at the limits of
coherence conveyed by the repetition of “kakã” and all this is a skillful expression
of the emotional tensions within and between the two speakers.
And now Talthybius,
having given his news with such difficulty, must act, and in doing so he uses
no force but that of persuasion. He gets Andromache to see the hopelessness of
resistance and to relinquish her child herself. He appeals to her nobility
(727, cf. 302), and urges her not to curse the Greeks, in order to avoid her
child being refused burial (735–736). It was her fame for wifely compliance
that was her downfall, says Andromache (657–658), and it is to her sense of
compliance that Talthybius appeals. His clinching argument to Andromache is the
stipulation of her cooperation as the condition of the child’s burial.
Now this proposal is
simply presented by Euripides as a dilemma facing Andromache. No clear
indication is given as to whether the offer of burial for the child was part of
the decision of the Greek army or whether it is Talthybius’ own idea. It is
true that he twice mentions the Greeks in his stipulation: if she says anything
to anger the army the child will not be buried, whereas if she accepts her
misfortune quietly it will, and she will find the Greeks better disposed
towards her (735–739). The
bargain is crucial for this distinction, since it allows Talthybius to obtain
the child without physical force, and this suggests that the offer of burial
belongs to the process of the seizing of the child for execution and is not
part of the decree of execution itself. Consider the emphasis with which
Talthybius identifies the authors of the decision to kill the child, (that offstage
villain Odysseus 711, 721); but no author is given for the bargain. There is no
doubt that Greek provision for burial of the slain Astyanax would run entirely
counter to all the evidence which the play contains on the subject of treatment
of the dead at the sack: corpses are left exposed for the vultures round
Athena’s temple (599–600); the husbands of the Chorus are unburied (1085);
Priam is unburied (1313); and Andromache has to cover with clothing the body of
Polyxena upon which she chanced (626–627).
In this context it seems almost unthinkable that the Greek
decision would provide for burial at all. On the other hand the proposal sounds very
much like one which the envoy entrusted with the execution might devise in
order to facilitate his unpleasant task. But it is also the idea of someone who understands the
importance of burial to the bereaved and who offers it as a consolation. This
is not a matter of the content of the order but of the mode of its execution,
as is implied by the transition at line 726 (“but let it be so and …”), and
Talthybius has earlier shown himself to be capable of exercising some
sympathetic independence in carrying out his orders.
Could an Athenian audience be expected to have accepted such an
action on the part of a herald? The frequent references in tragedy to the
proper limits of a herald’s duty in conveying messages, and complaints about
excesses, suggest that the limits were not always observed, and in the
suppliant plays heralds threaten or actually use force. But in tragedy the
limits which heralds most often transgress are those of speech rather than
action.
As Andromache relinquishes the child to go to her “fine
wedding” ( 778– 779, cf. 420), Talthybius speaks gently to the child, but once
he has detached him from his mother he is firm in his command to his attendants
to hold him (786). His job has been done with as little trouble for all
concerned as possible. But it was not merely a cold, practical act of
management. Conspicuously, at the start of the scene he asked her not to hate
him as a person for what he had to do as a herald, so now at the end his
reflection on his job brings out into the open a tension between the sort of
person he is and the sort of tasks he has to perform: that kind of herald’s work
“should be done by someone more pitiless and shameless” than he is ( 786–789).
Further, as happens with decisions made in tragedy, Talthybius is going to get
involved in ways he did not imagine when he made the bargain with Andromache.
Troy's Last Funeral
Talthybius returns at verse 1123 with the boy’s body.
Something entirely unexpected has happened. When he took the body for burial to
Andromache as agreed, she was already embarked for Greece and only had time to
arrange for Hecuba to perform the funeral ceremony. Here again there is nothing
definite to indicate whether the burial was prescribed by the assembled army or
was suggested by Talthybius. However, the detail that Andromache has to ask
Neoptolemos just before their departure to have him buried suggests that burial
was not part of the whole provision for his death, and might well have been
lost by default, had she not made other arrangements. This point, as far as it
goes, suits Talthybius’ initiative better. Again the tension in the herald’s
feelings is well represented: he admits to weeping freely at Andromache’s
departure (1130–1131), an extraordinary admission of overt sympathy by one of
the conquerors. His insight into Andromache’s values permeates his account of
her request, given in indirect speech, for burial and not to have the shield of
Hector taken to the bedroom of her new marriage. At the same time, he can
remember that shield as it appeared to the Greeks, as an object of terror
(1136). As at lines 302–303 Talthybius showed that he understood the way free
spirits might react to demeaning adversity, so here he grasps the abhorrence
felt by Andromache, but again his insight is limited by his identification of
his interests with those of the Greeks.
So now he has inherited the task of bringing the body to
Hecuba, but instead of merely contenting himself with doing that, and without
any need to find the most diplomatic way of negotiating his objective, he will
cooperate with her in the funeral. Talthybius has washed the corpse and will
dig the grave; she will perform the dressing and lament (1146– 1155).
Some scholars have suggested that the Greek Talthybius’
presence would be an intrusive factor in the scene of Hecuba’s grieving and
that, while his absence, exiting to prepare the grave speeds up movement toward
the ships, it allows our exclusive contemplation of the Trojan women enacting
the last funeral of Troy. The Greek attendants, one must suppose, are in the
background after they have put down the shield in which the boy is to be laid
(1156) until they take it up again for the procession (1246), but anonymous
mute attendants are regular in tragedy, and would not intrude like Talthybius,
a speaking character who has been identified so clearly. His presence would
overcomplicate the scene: he is a Greek, an enemy, the very man in charge of
the boy’s killing.
For Talthybius to overcome such barriers would stamp him as a
closer friend than he can reasonably be and would require an acceptance by
Hecuba which would need explanation. Thus, his absence is required, but, if the
reading suggested above is correct, the funeral is as much his work as it is
anybody else’s. It was he who urged compliance from Andromache so that the boy
would not be unburied (737–738). Things have come about as he suggested but in
an unexpected way, for the first sign of Greek kindness was the permission
granted by Neoptolemus to have the body buried in Hector’s shield, and it is
Talthybius himself who will lay the body in the grave. And here too is the
great gain realized by the omission of a Messenger’s speech. If Talthybius had
described the death and burial of Astyanax, as he did that of Polyxena in
Hecuba, no doubt the potential for a pathetic description was considerable; but
it would have been Andromache, not Hecuba, who performed the rites, and the
play would have lost the direct intervention of the sympathetic herald, the
actual presence of the boy’s corpse, and the visible use of that most moving
image of the Trojan past, the shield of Hecuba’s own son Hector. That
Talthybius should not be present at the lament epitomizes the play’s main
absence from the prison camp, that of the Greek commanders. If Talthybius is
the face of ordinary human sympathy intervening between the impersonal
destroyers and the suffering victims, then his absence from the funeral rites
which his sympathy made possible focuses our concentration with even greater
intensity upon the sorrowing of Troy in a self-absorption which nothing external
can disturb. Talthybius is no hero and his feelings cannot measure those of
Hecuba bending over her dead grandson. We do not want to have reminded her of
mere acts of kindness, these sorrows are too overwhelming and the tragedy too intense.
Hecuba and the women can only be alone for this final Trojan ceremony.
In the exodos Talthybius returns from burying the child and
with a voice of general authority orders the burning of the city (1260–1264).
He bids Hecuba follow Odysseus’ men who have come for her (1269–1271), with a
word of pity—which contrasts with the more matter-of-fact address he used at
lines 235–237 before his exposure to the successive stages of her misery.
Hecuba says, “Best for me to die with this country of mine as it burns:” (1282-83) these eight simple Greek words, not one wasted, are eloquence befitting a Queen. ὡς κάλλιστά μοι σὺν τῇδε πατρίδι κατθανεῖν πυρουμένῃ. (hos kallista moi sun tede patridi katthanein pyromene).
As she tries to immolate herself in the burning city as on a pyre,
he mingles sympathy with firmness, ordering the soldiers to take her (1284–1286).
This is the only time Talthybius orders anything to be done by force. But in
view of his behavior in connection with the boy it would be wrong to accuse him
of brutality on the strength of line “Take her, but not to spare her.” He is an
agent in the sack of a city, carrying out cruel orders, too insignificant a
figure to aspire to the tragic stature of defiance in obedience to a higher
law. That is the emptiness which Euripides has caught at the heart of this
play. But on that dismal day it is hard to imagine how Talthybius could have
gone about the wretched tasks imposed upon a herald with greater humanity.
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